KEIKO MARUO returned to Osaka last night with her bags full of emergency supplies instead of the expensive gifts she had planned to buy on a shopping trip to Hong Kong.
Mrs Maruo cut short a holiday with friends in Tsim Sha Tsui after being warned by her badly shaken husband Takeshi to prepare for the worst.
Dr Maruo in a dawn telephone call to his wife, told her how their luxury apartment in the seaside resort area of Kobe was shaking and swaying and felt like it would collapse.
'He said he was lucky he was not killed because the TV in our bedroom fell down next to the bed and the bookcases and cabinets fell with it,' Mrs Maruo said.
'He said we will have to start all over from the beginning because we have lost everything, all our antique vases, china, ancient Japanese plates and French Baccarat. It seems like our place was in the area hit hardest but somehow the building is still up.' Dr Maruo works in the medical faculty at Kobe University and the couple has been collecting Asian artefacts for the past 25 years.
Mrs Maruo said that after scouring Hong Kong for Chinese arts and crafts as well as fashionable clothes and cosmetics, the last thing she had expected to be carrying back home was emergency supplies for her family.
